As Internet usage continues to grow, more and more customers are accessing communications services via a mobile device, e.g., a cell phone, a smart phone, a laptop computer, etc. For example, a customer may receive multimedia content via his/her cell phone. The cell phone transmits and receives voice and data packets to and from the service provider's network via a base station and an access network.
The customer's ability to access services via a wireless device is dependent on the availability of capacity on various network elements, e.g., radio access networks, cell site equipment and so on. The service provider may forecast the demand for a radio access network and/or cell site equipment such as a base station and deploy the network accordingly. As usage and the number of customers grow, the service provider may use the forecast to periodically expand the network. The expansion of the network may trigger offloading a portion of network traffic that is currently being carried by the existing network to a newly added portion. Conversely, if the forecast indicates a decline of network traffic volume, a portion of the existing network may be retired. The decommissioning or retirement of a portion of the existing network may trigger a need to offload the traffic that is currently being carried by the portion of the network that is being retired to other portions of the network. Hence, the service provider needs to perform traffic reassignment to handle either a declining or an increasing network traffic volume.
One approach for performing the traffic reassignment is for a user (e.g., a network planner) to manually select the traffic to be offloaded. However, this approach is highly labor intensive and error prone. Furthermore, the selection is highly subjective. As such, the usefulness of the expansion of the network or the decommissioning of a portion of the network is highly dependent on the planning experience and instinct of the user.